It’s Official: Parisians Are Just as Obsessed With Brooklyn Style as We Are

In French, a water tower is a château d’eau. Even those claiming they can’t speak a word of French could figure out that the literal translation in English is “water castle.” Which suddenly makes you rethink the countless elevated tanks dotting the Brooklyn skyline, non?

Each year, Le Bon Marché, arguably the most tasteful of department stores in Paris, debuts temporary programming inspired by a destination. Last year took customers to Japan, preceded by Brazil in 2013. London and Los Angeles have been spotlighted as well—just in case you were concerned the store had inflated the borough to city-state status.

Products across all categories—fashion, accessories, beauty, decor, and food—are carefully selected and carried for a limited time. Areas of the store have been demarcated with screen-printed brickwork and animated with a barber, coffee counter, and flower bar. Kids can participate in brownie-baking sessions, while parents can make an appointment with famous tattoo artist Scott Campbell (on site until September 9).

When a communications director referred to the store’s transformation by turning Brooklyn into a French verb, as in Brooklyniser (BROOK-lin-EE-SAY), you get a sense of the team’s immersion.

Le Bon Marché’s director of the style office, Jennifer Cuvillier, explained that the team had initially considered all of New York City before realizing that “Brooklyn was strong and different enough by itself to tell us a story.”

If the project has been undertaken on an impressive experiential scale, it also marks the evolving infatuation between Paris and the Big Apple. On the one hand, we now live in a world where kale chips and macarons are traded across the Atlantic like kids swapping lunchbox snacks. Le Bon Marché is hoping customers take to Fishs Eddy colored Mason jars the same way New Yorkers head to ABC Carpet & Home for Astier de Villatte.

(Okay, so Fishs Eddy is technically located in Manhattan, as are fashion brands Harvey Faircloth and Save Khaki United. Cuvillier noted a certain flexibility to the criteria—that if the brand wasn’t Brooklyn-based, it needed to capture the spirit.) In fashion terms, she says, “People want to be themselves; they don’t always want to be directional. And it’s easy to get this style, yet it’s also cool.”

Before joining Vogue as Beauty Director this summer, longtime Brooklyn resident Celia Ellenberg acted as a consultant on the project. In addition to proposing and vetting potential brands, she took buyers to Coney Island for hot dogs and into the deep stretches of Ridgewood for studio visits. When we spoke, she had yet to see the mise-en-scène but she echoed Cuvillier as far as the zeitgeist-y appeal. “The spirit is exportable and inspiring to people. That’s the coolest part. And a lot of it isn’t that complicated; it’s just stuff you wouldn’t have thought about doing.”

To be sure, the Brooklyn codes have been percolating for some time. Paris may not have a Keith McNally counterpart to replicate the brasserie template, but restaurants that have opened within the past year typically borrow from the industrial-minimalist-reclaimed trifecta of aesthetic elements.

Not long after I arrived four years ago, kale became available after a decades-long absence (farmers stopped growing it for human consumption because it was associated with wartime). When a healthy lunch chain began offering it for custom salads, with staff wearing promotional “I heart kale” buttons, customers would ask, “Who is kale?” Two months ago, my Parisian pal showed up to brunch (and yes, the Sunday ritual has become as polarizing here, too) wearing the ubiquitous Yale-style Kale sweatshirt with her Stan Smiths. Kale chips, for sale in the store alongside Saint Ash of Brooklyn mittens, have been available in Le Bon Marché for a while now. Meanwhile, an expat friend marveled that when Jay Z and Kanye West came for their Watch the Throne tour, she saw more Brooklyn caps and jerseys than she’d ever seen during her fifteen years in Williamsburg and Carroll Gardens.

But you could also view Brooklyn Rive Gauche as an acknowledgement that for all the fetishizing, there is legitimate common ground between both locales, namely, the emphasis on artisanal values and craftsmanship. In Paris, they are associated with tradition and luxury; in Brooklyn, entrepreneurship. Yet the appreciation seems on par.

Cuvillier, however, suggests that her reconnaissance shed new light on familiar—and authentic—tropes. Paris has been home to outdoors farmers’ markets and handsome bearded dudes well before they became trendy; yet she observed differences in merchandising and a palpable community spirit that she was eager to convey within the store’s walls.

“There, it’s a philosophy,” she says. “It’s modernity mixed with the local spirit and it’s a global message. It’s about taking account of what is important and taking time to develop these ideas and products. And for the future, that’s more and more important.”

As for the knee-jerk reaction to groan over hipster globalization (expats have already begun posting pictures to Instagram with predictably sarcastic hashtags), there is something instinctively eye roll–inducing to any exercise involving cultural appropriation. Not to mention the valid criticism that authenticity can get lost in translation. A video installation of a virtual rollercoaster ride through Brooklyn by Dawid Tomaszewski with audio by electronic music duo Polo & Pan can be watched from a neon-hued Luxembourg chair. There’s neither garden gravel nor Bed Stuy grit. But then, that’s not why people go to Le Bon Marché; they go because the environment is invariably elevated whether furnished with water castles or ready-to-wear.

Ellenberg says she sympathizes with the push-back—to a point. “To travel all the way to Paris or even Tokyo and see a carbon copy of someone on Bedford Avenue is funny and weird and a small bummer, but also kind of cool because the culture has reached that level.” And anyway, as she points out, mainstream visibility for those creating in the hood she’s called home for the past fifteen years is not a bad thing. “People with small businesses have worked hard and now their designs are being opened up to a whole new world of opportunity.”

While certain products were stocked before the exhibition (see: Reese’s peanut butter spread, a questionable comestible no matter the occasion), others may find a permanent place on Le Bon Marché’s shelves. Cuvillier expects the Lynn and Lawrence alpaca beanies to perform well, for example. In French, they’re called bonnets.